The Southwest Texas Sacred Harp Singing Convention is an annual gathering of shape note singers. Songs are sung a cappella from the Sacred Harp tune book. The Convention was organized on April 28, 1900 at the Round Top School House, in Caldwell County, Texas, as the South Union Singing Convention. It is the second oldest continuous Sacred Harp convention in Texas. Several older conventions are no longer extant.
During its history, the Southwest Texas Musical Convention has been held in at least a dozen Texas counties. Originally an annual two or three day convention, the delegates later changed to meet on each fifth weekend of the year. The Convention presently meets on Saturday and Sunday of Fifth Sunday weekends in the spring and fall. The spring session is held at Bethel Primitive Baptist Church, at McMahan, Texas. The fall session is held in Austin, Texas. The current "textbook" of the Convention is The B. F. White Sacred Harp (2006 Edition), first revised by W. M. Cooper and others in 1902.
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“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.
“The very locusts and crickets of a summer day are but later or earlier glosses on the Dherma Sastra of the Hindoos, a continuation of the sacred code.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Richard. Harp not on that string, madam, that is past.
Queen Elizabeth. Harp on it still shall I till heart-strings break.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)